The present invention relates to electronic shelf label (ESL) systems, and more specifically to a system and method of managing failure of an electronic shelf label to respond to a message.
ESL systems typically include a plurality of ESLs for merchandise items in a transaction establishment. ESLs typically display the price of corresponding merchandise items on store shelves and are typically attached to a rail along the leading edge of the shelves. A transaction establishment may contain thousands of ESLs to display the prices of the merchandise items. The ESLs are coupled to a central server from where information about the ESLs is typically maintained in an ESL database or data file. Price information displayed by the ESLs is obtained from a price look-up (PLU) data file and stored within an ESL price change record.
Inevitably, some ESLs do not or cannot communicate. Failures may be caused by poor location or a malfunction with the ESLs. When communication is poor, ESL system performance degrades because message queues are lengthened and because bandwidth is used to attempt to communicate with unresponsive ESLs. The situation is aggravated by the need to verify data integrity using more messages.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method of managing failure of an electronic shelf label to respond to a message.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a system and method of managing failure of an electronic shelf label (ESL) to respond to a message is provided.
The system includes an electronic shelf label which fails to respond to a first message, and a computer for resending the first message to the electronic shelf label at a first rate during a first time period, for identifying the electronic shelf label as unresponsive if the computer fails to receive an acknowledgment from the electronic shelf label during the first time period, and for sending a second message for determining whether the electronic shelf label exists at a second rate during a second time period.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a system and method of managing failure of an electronic shelf label to respond to a message.
It is another object of the present invention to phase out data communication attempts to unresponsive ESLs.
It is another object of the present invention to maximize ESL system bandwidth by minimizing overall communications to unresponsive ESLs.